In today’s world, there is a proliferation of documents and organizations have huge amounts of content that is poorly managed—or not managed at all. Documents are on shared drives, emails, and different and multiple Content Services Platforms or portable devices. Employees struggle to find what they are searching for, decreasing their productivity and increasing their inefficiency.

Have you ever wondered why you don’t find what you are searching for? Are you giving up to quickly, or are you searching in the wrong place?

In the previous blog post of the Alfred Finder series, we introduced the web application, that allows you to find documents on an Alfresco back-end. We extend Alfresco’s searchability by giving you intelligent user interfaces making navigation easier and searches faster, and Alfresco is a tool your users will use.

Finding is the keyword, as the core feature of the product. There are 4 ways to find documents on Alfresco:

1. Search bar and chips
2. Facets
3. Explorer and Queries panels
4. Advanced Searching option

In a nutshell, with Alfred Finder, you can build complex, nested search queries or choose the user-friendly mode to build your query with user-friendly chips.

In this article, let’s focus on the search bar and the facets.

1. Search bar and chips

The first and simplest way to search a document is via the search bar. Once you define your search parameters, a chip is visualized, related to the specific parameter. To narrow your search, you can add multiple chips or delete them if you want to search on everything, without any parameters.

When you type in the search bar, Alfred Finder provides auto-completion to guide you through your search. The auto-completion shows a list of possible chips you can use. You can select an item in the list that appears. Moreover, the auto-completion allows you to:

1. Search for a document type, to find a specific type of document
2. Pick a date, to find a document created on a specific date, in a date range, or before/after a date
3. Search for mime type to find a specific extension of the document you are looking for.

By adding chips for specific properties, you can better refine your search. For instance, you would like to find documents, created by your administrator, or even created and modified by him. Multiple chips are the way to narrow and more your searching.

“Alfred Finder guides your search from providing on what you can search to the details you needed”

2. Search via Facets 

Finding is about knowing what you are looking for. Facets are used to refine your search. Once you perform a search, you can narrow it down by selecting a facet that is available within the remaining search results. You can slice and dice your data in multiple ways with the help of various faceting algorithms.

Hope you liked the blog article, in the next one, we will describe the Explorer and Queries Panels and the Advanced Search Options.